The Spirit of the People - An Analysis of the English Mind

THE PEOPLE FROM THE OUTSIDE.

THE

SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE

CHAPTER I.

THE PEOPLE FROM THE OUTSIDE.

THREE years ago I was talking to a Professor of literature near the city of Münster, which is in Westphalia. At a certain point in our discussion my interlocutor said: But then, the Spirit of your People has always been so bloodthirsty. One becomes almost ill in reading your history, with its records of murders and beheadings.

That this should have been uttered where it was rendered it the more bewildering to one prone to form impressionists’ views upon general subjects. For the remark was made upon a level plain, within sight of a city whose every ancient stone must once at least have been bathed in blood. Those levels, vast and sandy or vast and green, stretching out towards the Low Countries, must in the secular wars of Europe have been traversed again and again by the feet of those licensed murderers that are soldiery. The very church towers of Münster are pointed out to the tourist as characteristic: they are square, because the spires that once crowned them were overturned by Anabaptists in their last desperate stand against the Prince Bishop—a last desperate stand after a siege in which fire, famine, cannibalism and rapine played a part unparalleled in the history of the world. The arcades of Münster witnessed murders of the most terrible: the church towers of Münster are square because, so the legend has it, the Anabaptists set their cannon upon the platforms left after the spires had fallen. And the very outline of the city is dominated still by the pinnacles of the Friedensaal—or hall erected to commemorate the Treaty of Münster,—to commemorate that Peace of Westphalia ending a war that had outlasted generations. Yet, with the glittering city beneath his eyes, with all these reminders of ancient bloodshed plain to the view in the clear air, in the peaceful summer weather, this student of literature could give it, as his particular impression of the English race, that its history in the reading made him ill.

This remark impressed me so singularly that ever since that day, three years ago, I have hardly passed any single twenty-four hours without giving at least some speculation to the psychology of the curiously mixed and mingled populations of the partner predominant in the history and fortunes of these islands. Incidentally, of course, I have speculated upon the history of that other, still more curiously mingled, and still more predominant, branch of the race that inhabits a western half-continent. As the result of these speculations I have offered to the world two volumes of impressions—the one of this people very much compressed into a great town, the other of this same people amidst the green acres of a restricted island. In the present volume I propose to myself to record a view of this people’s corporate activities, of its manifestations as a nation. With the completion of this volume I shall have achieved the task that set itself to me during the night after the afore-mentioned student of literature made his singular remark.

The person who sets himself such a task should, if he is to perform it at all ideally, possess certain qualities and the negation of certain qualities. He should be attached by very strong ties to the race of which he writes, or he will write without sympathy. He should, if possible, be attached to as many other races as may be by ties equally strong, or he will, lacking comprehension of other national manifestations, be unable to draw impartial comparisons. He must be possessed of a mind of some aptness to interest itself in almost every department of human thought, or his view will be tinged with that saddest of all human wrong-headedness—specialisation. He must look upon the world with the eyes neither of a social reformer nor of an engineer, neither with the eyes of a composer of operas nor of a carpenter. He must, as well as it is possible for a single man to compass it, be an all-round man. He must, in fact, be an amateur—a lover of his kind and all its works. At the same time he must be sufficiently a literary artist to be able to draw moving pictures; for his work, if it fails to interest, loses its very cause for existence. To what extent I who write these words possess these qualifications, I must leave to my biographers to decide.

Let me now attempt to put before the reader the reasons for the frame of mind of my excellent friend, the student of literature. It must be remembered that he is not English: he has not the reasons that the Englishman has for drawing morals from, or for accepting, our historic sequences. He is aware that his own land is steeped, is rendered fertile, by the blood of man in ages past. He sees however in these matters, domestic to him, the pressure of immense necessities, the hand of an august if inscrutable Providence. But, never having been so much as momentarily moved by our national middle-class poet’s dogma that English history is a matter of precedent broadening down to precedent, he cannot see that English state executions are part of an immense design. He sees instead a succession of sanguinary incidents. For let it be remembered that of the first twenty-six sovereigns who reigned in England since the Conquest no less than ten died deaths of violence; that, in addition to this, several Queens Consort, one Queen of Scotland, many rightful heirs to the throne, and innumerable statesmen of prominence died by the hands of the headsman or the secret murderer. And what great names, what picturesque and romantic figures has that roll not included!

There is a vivid French historical monograph that puts all history as a matter of catchwords, as misleading as you will—so that Henri IV. and his period are typified by the poule au pot, the Second Empire by l’Empire c’est la paix. And there are millions of observers of our present epoch who see the whole world of to-day menaced by a cloud bearing the ominous words l’ennemi c’est le Prussien! In a similar way the Romantic movement, still dominating Europe in a manner extraordinary enough, has made, for continental eyes, the whole of English history appear to be one vast, brown canvas, in which, out of the shadows, appears the block. Shadowy executioners hover in the half-lights behind brilliant queens or dark and melancholy kings—queens Flemish in looks, queens French, queens Spanish—but queens that are generally Mary Stuarts, or kings that are always Charles Stuarts, or children that are always the Princes in the Tower.

It is perhaps precisely because these dead kings of England do represent principles that they stand out so clearly in the historical imaginings of Europe, and it is perhaps because they themselves stand out so clearly, that the principles they merely represented are lost in the light of their brilliant fates. Speaking generally, we may say that in the large scheme of things the fall of Mary Stuart was a mere episode in the great downward trend of revealed religion; that in the large scheme of things the fall of Charles Stuart was but an episode in the great rise of popular dominion, or that the murder of the princes in the Tower represented a step forward in the great theory of the English kingly history—that theory that still makes the English kingship elective. But, just because these episodes were so admirably adapted for the handling of the Humanists, who were the romantic artists and poets—for that reason the executions were the things that counted. The doomed principles that Mary or Charles or the infant Edward so picturesquely died for—those doomed principles of catholicism, aristocracy or tail male—served to make Charles, Mary and the infant Edward sympathetic figures in the eyes of a sentimentalising Europe. For, if you die for a principle you will become an attractive figure; what the principle may be does not very much matter.

But England has very largely outgrown the influence of the Romantic movement, and, living in the centre of a crowd that is generally humane beyond belief, the Englishman sees his history as a matter of a good-humoured broadening down of precedent to precedent, a broad and tranquil stream of popular advance to power in which a few negligible individuals have lost upon the block their forgotten heads. Who in England remembers that more than one in three of England’s earlier kings died deaths of violence?

For, upon the whole the English crowd has grown humane beyond belief.* The other day a large dog took it into its head to lie down and fall asleep in the centre of the roadway in one of our largest and busiest thoroughfares. And it effectually blocked the way. Cabs avoided it: large motor omnibuses drove carefully round it: a great block was caused by the deflected traffic, and a great deal of time was lost. Yet the dog itself was absolutely valueless and unpresentable. And, curiously enough, I happened on the next day to witness in South London an episode almost exactly similar. A sheep, one of a flock on the way to Smithfield, had wedged itself firmly into the mechanism of an electric tram. It remained there for three-quarters of an hour, and I counted twenty-two trams all kept waiting whilst the officials of the first car endeavoured to save the life of an animal that in any case was doomed to death within the day.

These seemed to me to be singular instances of humanity on the part of a race that, at any rate in that part of its land, is remarkably in a hurry. They effaced for me much of the impression of underlying ferocity in the people—the impression that had been caused by some small sufferings at the hands of hostile mobs during a period of strife some years ago. For, upon the whole, the ferocities and barbarities of the English crowds during the Boer war might have been matched in any part of Europe. One suffered as much, being English upon the Continent, as one suffered for being pro-Boer in this country. But I cannot well imagine in any continental city a crowd of a couple of thousand people watching with intense sympathy (or even suffering with good humour considerable inconvenience for the sake of) a sheep that was shortly to die. It is true that in any English street one may see a broken-legged horse stand for hours waiting to be put out of its agony. But that is a manifestation of official stupidity, and is upon the whole a spectacle repugnant to the feelings of the onlookers, any one of whom would approve or applaud the instant slaughtering of a poor animal.

I do not assume that these instances of humanity in English crowds distinguish the Anglo-Saxon from all his human brothers. But just because almost every Englishman will recognise the truth in them, and just because almost every Englishman will applaud the action of these tram-conductors or cab-drivers, it does seem to me to be arguable that, upon the whole, much of the ferocity that was a part of the spirit of the people has died out.

Since witnessing these two events, I have put them to several foreigners. It has been noticeable to me that each of these foreigners has taken the humanitarian standard of his own country to be, as it were, the normal and proper level from which to regard the brute creation—this although practically none of them was what we should call patriotic. But each of them agreed that the instance of the sheep betrayed what they called sentimentality; each of them, indeed, used this very word. Even a Hindoo said that if the sheep were to be slaughtered within the hour it mattered very little whether its end came at the hands of a butcher or beneath the wheels of a tramcar; and a Frenchman, a German, and a Russian lady agreed in saying that it was absurd that so much inconvenience to human beings should have been incurred merely to save the life of a dog. No doubt, if he were asked to judge the matter in the light of pure reason, every Englishman would have agreed with them; but I think that there is little doubt that such an Englishman, if he had stood upon the kerb-stone and watched these two small dramas, would have voted life to the dog and the sheep, or would at least have applauded these forbearances.

It happened that one of the persons to whom I put these cases was the very German student of literature to whom I referred in my first words. He, for his part,